One of the best parts of attending the Small Press Expo is getting to vote in the Ignatz Awards. It's a chance to have a say on who wins a brick, which is of course the best award you can win, because you never know when you might need it to defend against a fascist. I loved getting to check the box next to my favorites and to learn about new creators by seeing who the judging team deemed worthy of being included that year. Best of all, anyone can attend the ceremony, which is often a big afterparty where you can tell who won just by listening to the cheering of the audience. (This was the biggest shock for me at the Eisners. Very rarely did the person who got the most applause actually win.)

What are the Ignatz awards? Let's have them tell you:

About the AwardThe Ignatz Award, named for the character in the classic comic strip Krazy Kat by George Herriman, is the festival prize of the Small Press Expo, that since 1997 has recognized outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning. The ballot is created by a panel of five cartoonists and is voted on by the attendees of the SPX festival. This year’s Ignatz image was drawn by the 2016 Promising New Talent winner, Tillie Walden.

I don't even know where to begin with that lineup. So many categories are filled with great nominees. How do you choose between John Lewis/Nate Powell and Box Brown, whose work is excellent, but in very different ways? Or that anthology category, which has the amazing work of Taneka Stotts, Joamette Gil, and Prism going head to head? And that's not discounting the importance of showing off international work by Fantagraphics! Yikes! It almost makes me glad I don't have to pick! (Of course, I'll ask you to give strong consideration to Elements, both because it's a great anthology and because my friend Taneka is the editor.)

Or what about Outstanding Online Comic, which features two articles from The Nib, which is having a great year of being nominated for things. I'd be hard pressed to pick a winner here, too. I'm pretty sure the voting will be quite close in Best Outstanding Collection, where Tamaki, Bagge, and Piskor are all well-known. I'd imagine one of those three will win, but you never know.

There's one category that's *relatively* easy for me. I'm a huge fan of Aud Koch, and I love that she's being recognized by the Small Press Expo. "Yours" by Margot Ferrick is a very challenging work, and it pushes the boundaries of the comic medium. I'm even planning to set it up for a Spotlight entry. But Aud's work is something special, the kind of talent you want to be able to say you knew before she started working on "X"--and I hope that people who vote will see that. I'm an unabashed fan of her work. If you're at SPX, vote Aud!

The only other category I feel strongly about is Outstanding Comic. With no disrespect meant to anyone else, Your Black Friend, which I believe Scott or I will be hitting up as a Spotlight, needs to win. It was a criminal oversight that this important story didn't get the Eisner recognition it deserved. SPX attendees need to show the larger comics world what a mistake that was. So, if you're at SPX, Vote Ben!

No matter the results, this is a very strong lineup of nominees, and I like that it's got a lot of people who, without looking, haven't received nominations before, along with some of the usual suspects. I hope you give all these comics and creators a chance (but especially Aud and Ben and Taneka) and find some great comics on these lists. I know I'll be looking into several of the names I don't recognize to add to my comics collection soon.